A Busy Month

I've been a horrible blogger lately! It seems like we've been so busy and moving from one thing to another without a break. Clint always laughs when I say that because I usually always have time to sit down and watch an episode of So You Think You Can Dance or Amazing Race on TV- but after GO-GO-GOing all day, it's nice to sit and veg out for a few minutes! Here are some of October and November's highlights...
I took this picture of Allison and Kenzie last month. I think we were on the way to a soccer game or something, but I wanted to take a picture of them in their cute school sweatshirts. Kenzie is in 5th grade and Allison is in 2nd. Next year, Kenzie will be moving to the middle school and Allison will be my last elementary school kid! Crazy!! I recently asked Allison if she'd like to transfer to my school for the last 3 years of elementary. She was so excited!! I am too- so she will be coming to my school for 3rd grade next year and I'll get to see her in the halls and at lunch. I've always wanted to do that. She can come to my room after school and hang out for the 20-30 minutes that I have to stay and finish up and then come home with me. She's not worried about leaving friends behind because they all live in our neighborhood or go to church with us- and my school is only minutes away, so those friends will be close by as well.


Next... we have scenes from a pumpkin carving night. Some great friends invited a few families to carve pumpkins at their house. Last minute, they changed it to the church because it looked like rain coming, so we pulled out the tables and had a ball!



There were some fun games we played as families. If you can't tell... this is Zach under all that toliet paper!

Hmmm, does he look better covered in TP??

One of the games required Zach to tie a plastic pumpkin to the front of him, and we had to get in line and throw candy corn's into the pumpkin. Zach... always being the thinker, decided he could catch them in his mouth and drop them into the bucket. He was right and we WON!! He's great at it! What a talent- too bad they are hiring for that right now!!

And a cute shot of our Mackenzie!

Another highlight of the month was Becky coming into town. You might remember pics of Becky from our trip to Perth, Australia this past summer. Bek is 18 and Zach and Becky had so much fun hanging out this summer and getting to know each other. We talked her in to coming over and hanging out for a bit- so she's here visiting for 2 1/2 months, with a stay in Utah during that time as well. We've been indoctrinating her into the US. She quickly fell in love with Dr. Pepper (which was NOT my doing, she had it at Quizno's while I was at work!") and we addicted her to "The Office" TV show and we've been renting the seasons from years past and catching her up. She's also been to a few young single adult activites and gone on a couple dates with the neighbor boy and helped with the church cannery assignment. This next week will be Thanksgiving week with my Mom, Tom and brother Danny coming. Then she will drive back to Utah with Danny and hang out with Karen and her family for a couple weeks. Here's some pics from her coming to the airport...

Notice of course the addition to our family... Hailey. She and Zach are still dating- it's been about 6-7 months I think...

During the month, I also talked with the kids and we decided to make signs and sell them at a craft fair for the kids to earn some money for Christmas presents. So- we've been spending all our free time painting, sanding, and making signs. We took them to the fair this past Saturday and BUST!!! It was horrible- we only sold 3 signs all day- not very good advertising for the fair. We've never had such a bad day at a craft fair. So- I'll be trying to sell them over the next few weeks at work, friends or craigs list!! If you want a cute sign- let me know LOL Here's some of the countdown to Christmas blocks we made.

And a HUGE highlight of the month was the New Moon movie. My friend Stacey hooked us up with a sneak preview the night BEFORE it officially came out. We had cute passes made up and they sent us emails from "Bella" during the few weeks before the big night to keep us excited. I won a New Moon CD soundtrack the night of the movie. This time, it didn't disappoint! I was hugely disappointed in Twilight the movie, but this movie ROCKED! I made T-shirts for Emily, Bek and I- mine said, "My husband told me to choose between him and Twlight.... I miss him sometimes" Emily's had a pic of Jacob and the wolves and it said "Run with Wolves" and Bek's had a pic of Emmett and had a quote by him from the movie. We had a great night!

So now, we're just gearing up for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have parent teacher conferences the next few days- Young Women activities are still keeping me very busy and to top everything off- I'm starting Dec 1st back to school to get my Masters Degree in Math Education K-6. The principal asked me over the summer to be the math trainer for the building and our new math curriculum and I'm really enjoying it. So, I thought it would be a good use of my time plus it will be nice to have the extra money handy in the next 18 month-2 years as Zach gets ready to graduate and leave on his mission. Speaking of which... my baby turned 17 this past week. Hard to believe he's getting that old- when I want to speak to him, I pretty much have to text him between school, friends, girlfriend and now basketball at school. He's a great kid though and I'm sure proud of him.

I'll try to be better at keeping us- but no guaratees!!